Technical Field
Embodiments of the present invention relate to X-ray mammography and more particularly to assistance tools for carrying out an X-ray-guided breast biopsy.
Description of Related Art
Microcalcifications are tiny specks of mineral deposits (calcium) that can be scattered throughout the mammary gland or occur in clusters. Commonly, they simply indicate the presence of tiny benign cysts, but can signify the presence of early breast cancer.
Suspicious microcalcifications are commonly punctured thanks to biopsy, which is a medical test commonly performed by a surgeon or an interventional radiologist involving sampling of cells or tissues for examination.
Ultrasound guided biopsy is preferentially performed, as it is a non-irradiating modality, but micro calcifications are often hard to detect with such techniques. On the contrary, micro-calcifications are well detected with X-rays, and that is why mammography is used to puncture suspicious microcalcifications clusters.
Before sampling the radiologist has to select a target point of the breast. The middle of a notch is placed at the selected target point, after firing a biopsy gun.
Selecting the target point may be carried out thanks too many image acquisition techniques.
A conventional procedure for X-ray guided biopsy is stereotaxy. This procedure, which is mainly performed in the case of breast biopsy, comprises the acquisition of two stereo views taken at two different angles, usually +15°/−15°. With stereotaxy, the target point selection is generally done by selecting one point in each of the two stereo views. These points shall correspond to the target projection in the stereo images.
Another procedure for X-ray guided biopsy is digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT). This procedure is considered as potentially more efficient to guide breast biopsy than conventional stereotaxy, since it provides a 3D representation of the breast.
For DBT biopsy, the radiologist navigates though the 3D image acquired to select the target point. With DBT, to select the target point, the radiologist has to go up and down in the 3D volume and select the slice and the pixel to maximize the probability of getting micro-calcifications in the samples.
However, such navigation is very time consuming for the radiologist and thus may significantly increase the duration of the biopsy.
In addition, the target point selected by the radiologist may be approximate, especially when microcalcifications form multiple clusters in different regions of the breast.